


Stars

by ladyvivien



Category: Holby City
Genre: Bernie has some weird habits, Biphobia, F/F, I really hate the term 'gold star lesbian', Serena should get all the stars and maybe a medal, Serena thinks too much, Tiny bit of Angst, silly fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 18:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10519755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyvivien/pseuds/ladyvivien
Summary: Serena Campbell will never be a gold star lesbian.





	

Serena thinks that she has, on the whole, adapted pretty well to a relationship with a woman and all that it entails. It's quite nice to have someone who understands that post-menopause, lube is more often a requirement than not, and that the collection of vibrators in her bedside drawer isn't a threat to anyone's masculinity. Despite reading about tales of women getting turned away from gay bars for being too obviously heterosexual, she saunters into a canal-side pub that the internet reliably informs her is an unofficial lesbian bar hand in hand with Bernie and doesn't get a second glance. Her first instinct is relief and her second is offence - is she really so past it that she can't turn one woman's head? - before she realises that the rugby has started. She's never seen so many lesbians - queer women, she supposes is a broader term - staring so intently at men's thighs in her life. Her third thought is that her mother was right, it's probably the haircut. 

Given the halo of chaos that permanently surrounds her partner - isn't the military supposed to be terribly keen on order? - she finds herself forgetting that Bernie spent most of her adult life in the armed forces but, five minutes into the game when Bernie is turning the air blue with a cascade of profanity that Serena hasn't heard outside Saturday night in A&E, she remembers that this talented, brilliant woman is and always will be a soldier.

Serena, on the other hand, marched against Iraq and keeps meaning to reactivate her CND membership (she also keeps forgetting, and has resigned herself to the fact that if Trident fires on whoever it's supposed to be aimed at, it's partly her fault). She's not exactly a hippy - the odd joint at university aside - but she'd never imagined herself settling down with someone who can drive a tank. And until now, she had always prided herself on not getting dragged along to watch whatever tedious sporting event her partner was currently glued to. Is it less feminist, she wonders, if she's acquiescing to her partner's wishes when said partner is a woman? 

Serena does not believe in competing with other women - not in the workplace, not in terms of appearance and not when it comes to her partner's exes. But the ghost of Alex Dawson materialises whenever she's feeling uncertain - she was a permanent fixture in their shared office when Bernie was in Ukraine - and she feels the other woman's presence solidly between them now. She rips open the second bag of crisps with more viciousness than they really deserve, and ends up scattering them across the table. One of them lies in a splashed drop of shiraz, and Bernie picks it up and eats it without moving her eyes from the screen. It's a miracle that the woman is still alive - if she thinks Serena didn't notice the fact that she dropped a slice of pizza cheese-side down on her desk chair before eating it and then sitting on the greasy chair during their last all-night shift, then Berenice Griselda Wolfe very much mistaken. But still, a traitorous thought whispers in her head that Bernie would be having far more fun if she was here with someone who shared her love of grown men running around in the mud, or at least enjoyed it less libidinously. Is she even allowed to be lusting over that England player's physique when she's in a lesbian pub? 

Alex probably wouldn't have thrown crisps around in a fit of 'not being gay enough' pique and she certainly wouldn't be fishing her iPad out of her bag (which would doubtless be something terribly practical and not an overpriced, oversized Mulberry that was a 50th birthday present to herself) during the rugby. 

"Catching up on some work, love?" Bernie mumbles. Serena nods and Googles 'what do lesbians think of bisexuals'. 

She comes up with YouTube videos of impossibly self-assured, depressingly young women and a Buzzfeed article of things never to say to bisexuals - Serena mentally adds 'Sorry, we've only got merlot' and 'I'm afraid there was nothing more we could do for [loved one's name]' to the list. Peppered between the links to porn and things that might be 'memes' (she'll need to get Jason to explain that one again) is a general sense that as far as lesbians are concerned, bi women are not to be trusted. No matter that she isn't the one who cheated on her husband, or that she was willing to discard everything she thought she knew about herself for this bloody amazing woman, she is now being placed firmly in the category of 'greedy' - she watched Bernie lick crisp dust off the packet - or 'confused'. She isn't confused. She knows what she wants, and what she wants is Major Berenice Walking Disaster Wolfe. 

But does Bernie want her? Maybe now that she's out and proud, she'll want someone who can commit, not just to her but to a lifestyle. Except the only lifestyle Bernie seems interested in involves surgery, sex with Serena, wine and smoking an unlit cigarette whenever she's stressed. Still, now that Bernie extricated herself from the bonds of compulsory heterosexuality (Serena has been reading Adrienne Rich - she likes the poetry better than the essays), is she expecting Serena to do the same?

Bernie cared for Marcus, loved him, but never wanted him. Serena thinks she never really loved Edward or Robbie or any of the men in between the way she loves Bernie, but she did want them. She still gets a warm throb of desire when she sees a very attractive man - usually Daniel Craig, since it transpires that Bernie hasn't seen a single Bond film since _Timothy Dalton_ of all people and Serena has been catching her up - and were she single and approached by one, she'd probably take him to bed. But it's not just Bernie - that woman who played Mrs Claus in the Marks' Christmas adverts was rather tasty and Eva Green _dear God_ , could get it six ways from Sunday. Serena likes women. Likes women, plural. Likes women sexually. And while she may not have the decades of practice with them as she does with men - she guiltily remembers the latest missive from HR about pronouns and unisex toilets and makes a mental note to find out if she's attracted to people outside the gender binary - she's doing pretty well for a beginner. 

After all, she can perform a laparotomy even though her specialism was cardiothoracics. She got an MBA from Harvard and balanced being a bloody-brilliant -if-she-does-say-so-herself doctor with being the kind of deputy CEO Holby urgently needed, all without missing a step. She can handle a little sexual orientation multi-tasking and give "earthshatteringly good" orgasms to a woman whose ex-girlfriend was, in that delightful phrase she came across and now can't get out of her head, a 'gold star lesbian', whose private parts have never been sullied by cock. Well, sod that (also, it sounds transphobic and Serena is working very hard to support all the other letters covered by this LGBT umbrella she finds herself standing under). She has thirty-plus years of sexual experience, the most knicker-droppingly attractive woman in the room as her partner and a seemingly innate gift for oral sex probably honed by hours of trying to make blow jobs slightly more interesting. Because Alex Dawson might have been a gold star lesbian, but Serena Campbell is a goddamn platinum star bisexual.


End file.
